Filed under: Video, iTunes, Mac 101
Mac 101: Using Home Sharing in iTunes 9
Home Sharing is one of the fantastic new features in iTunes 9, and one that slipped between the cracks in our coverage in the days after the software was released. Sang Tang showed us how to use FireWire to speed up transfers over your network, but this is a basic overview of how Home Sharing works and how you can use it to easily share media files to different computers in your household.
This video was made using the new screen recording option in QuickTime X, which proved to be extremely easy and useful.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
tekkenshihan said 1:10PM on 9-22-2009
OMG....are you filming this in a fighter jet??
Get your mic away from that fan!
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welchb said 2:14PM on 9-22-2009
And away from your keyboard/mouse. Sounds like you're screencasting from the Elephant House at your local zoo. heh.
Simon Arch said 10:50PM on 9-22-2009
That's the computer's fan. Which makes me wonder - which Mac do you have, Megan? I want to know so I don't buy one with such an annoying fan.
Kee Hinckley said 1:11PM on 9-22-2009
Unfortunately there's a nasty "bug" in Home Sharing. It assumes that you are not already sharing your music. I had hoped that it would work for people who keep their iTunes on a share (I really don't need to give everyone in my family a copy of 100+GB of music and movies). It should have made it easy to see what was missing from iTunes, but sitting on the disk. No such luck. It makes a copy of the file. If you try using it in that configuration you'll end up with "1. My Tune.m4a" and "1. My Tune 1.m4a" both in the folder. Such a simple thing for them to have done right… hopefully in the next release.
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Steve said 1:38PM on 9-22-2009
I was with this video until it got to the part about "at the bottom are a couple of options" (at 1:40) - I don't have a bar like that at the bottom with a couple of options. How can I get that bar back? I can't share apps currently.
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Steve said 8:46AM on 9-23-2009
No-one?
N3TWORK BURN3R said 3:38PM on 9-22-2009
How to use Home sharing....seriously? I think we went over that, 10 fold.
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Archy said 11:14PM on 9-22-2009
Guys, use Ethernet for this. Gigabit Ethernet much faster then FW800.
And yeas: Gigabit Ethernet sharing for iTunes+AppleTV+HD RUULLSS
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Schell said 2:32PM on 9-22-2009
Can't see the video here at work, but apparently you can't turn on browser viewing mode when looking at a shared lib? Any truth to that?
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etc65 said 2:16PM on 9-22-2009
Do you need to use the same itunes account to move files between computers?
I've been trying to move music from my desktop computer's master library to my son's laptop. When I activate home sharing on his laptop with his itunes account I can see the files but not move them from the desktop (with my itunes account) to his laptop.
iGO said 4:53PM on 9-22-2009
@etc65
Since you have two separate accounts, you need to authorize your computer, with your son's account and authorize his computer, with your account.
Or if you only want this to work in one direction. Authorize both computers with the one account whose purchased music will be shared.
Open iTunes and under Store in the menu bar, highlight 'Authorize Computer..."
evelez84 said 2:15PM on 9-22-2009
You can use Command Key- B and open the browser to browse through your music on Home Sharing. Thanks for the vid.
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mabhatter said 2:28PM on 9-22-2009
I haven't been impressed by the home sharing feature yet. It seems to be strictly, barebones dragging files between iTunes libraries. It seemed to do OK with purchases, but only purchases. I couldn't see any way to sync playlists across (let alone play data,etc) My big concern was dealing with purchases updated to "iTunes Plus" tracks.... It didn't look like those got flagged as "new" purchases? What happened to the old ones?
Non-iTunes purchases had to be manually synced. I had to physically use the view "not on this machine" and drag them all across. Again, no Playlists, no metadata... I haven't tried videos, podcasts, or Apps yet, but I have fewer of those and almost all are "official" itunes purchases so I'm not worried. I'm not impressed. I'm sitting at my 5 authorizations right now, with iPods and Apple TV and this is doing very little that hand copying/sneakernet wasn't doing for me.
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Tim said 2:32PM on 9-22-2009
How does Home Sharing work with those HP Media Servers, Can you make that your master repository and copy down to 4 clients what you want on each one? Could you point your Apple TV to the HP Server still?
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Greg Perkins said 2:34PM on 9-22-2009
This feature isn't as easily implemented as I thought. I can't seem to authorize another computer with my account. It would be nice if all the requirements were chained together in the same contextual menu.
Also, Quicktime X really needs a fan noise cancelling algorithm.
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rg said 2:44PM on 9-22-2009
Unfortunately the fact has been left out that you can only share between computers that are logged in under the SAME iTunes account. Most articles I've read have glossed over this fact. So you can share with yourself, but not with other members of your family, unless the other members of your family are using your iTunes account on their computers.
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Noah said 3:51PM on 9-22-2009
Has anyone figured out a way to easily share "Playlists" from one computer to another?
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iGO said 5:00PM on 9-22-2009
@etc65
Since you have two separate accounts, you need to authorize your computer, with your son's account and authorize his computer, with your account.
Or if you only want this to work in one direction. Authorize both computers with the one account whose purchased music will be shared.
Open iTunes and under Store in the menu bar, highlight 'Authorize Computer..."
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Chris Spera said 9:58AM on 9-23-2009
I am having a huge problem with this feature. After enabling Home Sharing, entering my account info and clicking the Done button, Home Sharing disappears from the left side of iTunes. Other computers on my home network do the exact same thing under iTunes 9.x
What am I doing wrong?
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Randy said 3:43AM on 9-24-2009
@Chris Spera,
Once you enable home sharing on two computers with the same itunes account, you will see the shared libraries under "Shared" on each computer. Clicking on it will give you access to the other library.